Introduction

Surprise! I also read stuff for adults sometimes. When I do and want to put it here, I’m planning to label it Fic for Grown Folks. NetGalley has a ton of wonderful stories for everyone and parents ask for recommendations too sometimes, you know?

This book is a little outside of the wheelhouse of this blog, but I wanted to cover it. V. Castro’s The Haunting of Alejandra was an incredible, terrifying read about colonization, generational trauma, and one woman’s struggle against the specter of La Llorona. From the publisher’s site:

Alejandra no longer knows who she is. To her husband, she is a wife, and to her children, a mother. To her own adoptive mother, she is a daughter. But they cannot see who Alejandra has become: a woman struggling with a darkness that threatens to consume her.
 
Nor can they see what Alejandra sees. In times of despair, a ghostly vision appears to her, the apparition of a crying woman in a ragged white gown.

Penguin Random House

I received an advance copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, and I’m here to tell you honestly that I enjoyed the heck out of this story. Let’s dive into it below.

The Good Stuff

The Haunting of Alejandra tells its story in chapters titled with names of different characters. From the opening scene, we’re treated to a raw, descriptive look into Alejandra’s interior life. We learn more about her past and her present as the wife and mother to a nuclear family, but we’re functionally dropped into what appears to be her lowest point in the story. At various times throughout the book, I found myself cheering for her and being devastated for her in turns. Castro has written an extraordinarily human woman struggling with mental illness and it’s easy to fall in love with her a little bit.

From this introduction, we meet Alejandra’s ancestors as well. We don’t generally get exact dates – more time periods or guesses at when events could be happening. These are interspersed throughout the story at specific times that highlight Alejandra’s current mental state and actions. Castro has expertly woven a story connecting Alejandra to her family’s history using not only those glimpses but a therapist and healer who is firmly in Alejandra’s corner.

The healer is a part of the magic of this book (pun unintended but great). We get glimpses of the monster’s point of view in the past, but we’re not certain it’s real through a majority of the book. I was a solid two-thirds of the way through before the characters acknowledged that the monster was impacting their lives not as an amorphous force but as an active, malignant presence. Castro’s buildup of this confrontation in contrast to Alejandra’s healing journey is masterful.

Seriously, this book is such a joy! I’m also trying to be very vague – there are some twists and turns right up until the very end, and I don’t want to rob you of the satisfaction of reading them for yourself. This book focuses on literal generational curses. Regardless of if you interpret it as allegory or as a genuine ghost story, there’s a lot of echoes in here for those of us that come from families impacted by generational trauma that hit close to home. This book is totally gory, completely glorious, and full of a powerful love. That said: mind the title of this post and know that this book is very firmly an adult novel. You might be able to recommend it to older teens looking for a deeply scary book, but make sure you use a thorough reference interview first. On that note, you can find some content warnings in between some adorable duckling GIFs. Take care and engage or don’t as needed!

Content warnings:

• Suicide/suicidal ideation
• Body horror
• Gore
• Pregnancy
• Grief
• Mental illness
• Child death
• Dementia
• Infidelity
• Pedophilia

In Summary

This story was incredible and I’m hoping to read more of Castro’s work in the future. This book is highly recommended.

The Haunting of Alejandra is written by V. Castro and published by Del Ray, an imprint of Penguin Random House. You can purchase The Haunting of Alejandra using the publisher’s links here. As always, gichi miigwech for reading!